Handcrafted Tea Cookies by Botanical Bakery

“Authentic. Distinctive. Unapologetic. Is it you…or the tea cookie?” This slogan for Botanical Bakery’s Handcrafted Tea Cookies sounds a bit grandiose for a butter cookie. But the Napa Valley company, run by “planter, baker and tea cookie maker” Sondra Wells, holds its cookies in the highest esteem and has ambitions beyond tempting taste buds. Wells believes that by starting with all-natural organic ingredients then adding in specific spices and herbs, the cookies have the power to affect mood and health.

The bakery begins with handcrafted dough made with unbleached organic hard red wheat flour, organic pure cane sugar and European-style organic sweet cream butter. The butter, boasting more than 85 percent butterfat, is made by a local creamery in a 1950s-era small-batch butter churn.

Next, the bakery adds aromatic culinary herbs and spices. The flavors, which include Cardamom, Lavender, Cinnamon Basil and Lemon Thyme, have a distinctive herbal taste and aroma. (The bakery debuts a new flavor—Ginger Lemongrass—this month.) Because only genuine herbs and spices (no tinctures or flavorings) are used, the cookies often contain leaves, flowers, stems or seeds.

Will a taste change your life? Probably not. But even a few minutes of serenity are worth a bite. Botanical Bakery’s Handcrafted Tea Cookies can be purchased ($12-$16 for a 6.5-ounce package, $1.75-$2.35 for a 1-ounce package) at select grocers in California, Washington and Missouri, as well as online at foodzie.com, amazon.com and botanicalbakery.com.—Kara Mayer Robinson

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